The Midas Touch

Stewart Padveen has the Midas Touch when it comes to web companies. I've spent the last twelve years of my career designing and deploying the technologies that drove two of his companies (HotOffice and Nutrio). While I was busy doing that, he started two more successful ventures (MotionPoint and Firmagen). He pitched his latest idea to me at the beginning of this year and it sounded like another winner; I knew I had to be involved.

Although I've cut my teeth on Java and "the enterprise", a couple years back I started dabbling in a little gem (if you'll excuse the pun) called Ruby; a spectacularly elegant programming language. Then some crazy ambitious young Dane came along and built on top of it an even more wonderful web framework named Rails. It was a match made in Heaven and I fell in love immediately.

And speaking of perfect matches, AdPickles and Ruby on Rails make a very cute couple. The project has made tremendous progress thanks to this framework and the tight-knit community of brilliant supporters and contributors, and most of all Jack Danger Canty, their dedicated wizard. Not since the Perl years of yore have I seen such blur of productivity.

But the back-end isn't where all the magic happens. There's a client piece to this puzzle as well. I won't spill too many beans here, lest Stewart chastise me, but let me say that Windows is a cruel mistress, and the impressive skills of Aaron Cody have managed to tame that shrew.

Mark my words, and bookmark this feed, this is going to be another rocket ride to the stars.

Our true colors

While the technical development of the adPickles technology is an intense but highly enjoyable project, we have paralleled our efforts with another project that is far less technical but a lot more difficult than I had ever imagined; picking the adPickles web site colors and web page design and layout. Color and design preferences are purely subjective, therefore it is no surprise that 12 people have 12 different opinions. Trying to find that universal design and color scheme that touches a universal emotionality is the holy grail of design. Simplicity is key for sure, but so it functionality and about a thousand tiny nuances that can inadvertently make or break the project. After countless hours or mock ups, designs and layouts by Sari, our resident "web-Rembrandt," we have settled on our colors and design. I am happy to report that the response has been unanimously positive from all who have seen it. I am sure we will make changes to the adPickles web site as we forge ahead, but thanks for a wonderful effort by Sari (with a little help firm tech gurus Ted and Jack).